In August 2015, Oatley was named the eighth most influential woman in sport by The Independent.[3]
Early life
Oatley was born in Wolverhampton[4] on 28 December 1975.[1] She was brought up in Codsall, South Staffordshire. Her late father Gerald was the managing director of a large gas appliance company, and her mother Sonja is a retired nurse who was born and brought up in South Africa, where her parents were Norwegian missionaries.[2]
Oatley spent a year travelling the world,[6] and then moved to London to work in intellectual property[7] as a sales and marketing manager, then key account manager. While playing amateur football for Chiswick Ladies Football Club, Oatley sustained a dislocated knee cap and ruptured ligaments, which resulted in a reconstruction operation and ten months recovering on crutches.[8] With further operations to follow, she was told she would no longer be able to play sport. That news prompted her decision to change career and train to become a journalist, with the aim of working in sport, particularly football.[9]
Journalism career
Oatley initially studied print journalism and radio production at evening classes while broadcasting on hospital radio. She then gave up her intellectual property management job as well as her flat, spent a summer sleeping on friends' floors whilst doing journalism work experience full-time. She undertook a Postgraduate Diploma (PgDip) in Broadcast Journalism at Sheffield Hallam University.[10] While studying she joined BBC Radio Leeds as a sports reporter, continuing to work there after graduation. Her first commentary was on a match between Wakefield & Emley and Worksop Town in the Unibond League.[11]
Oatley also worked as a news reporter in her native West Midlands with BBC WM, before moving back to London to work as a sports reporter for BBC London 94.9.[12]
Football commentary
She joined BBC Radio 5 Live in 2003 and became the first woman to commentate on a football match on British network radio in 2005, covering the England women's internationals at the 2005 UEFA Women's Championship.[13] Her subsequent interview with UEFA President Lennart Johansson became an international news story due to his controversial comments on women's football.[14]
Oatley became the first female football commentator in the history of BBC football programme Match of the Day, with her debut broadcast on 21 April 2007 for the Premier League match between Fulham and Blackburn Rovers.[15] She has since commentated on several further games for Match of the Day.
Oatley resumed her association football play-by-play commentary career in 2019 when she worked on seven 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup matches for the Host Broadcast Services (HBS) "world feed" on-site from Roazhon Park in Rennes, France.[18]
Oatley became the lead play-by-play commentator for FA Women's Super League (WSL) matches on Sky Sports in the UK in September 2021.[19] She stepped down from that role at the end of the 2022-2023 WSL season in May 2023 after she was hired by CBS Sports (USA) as the lead television main commentator (play-by-play) for the NWSL in March 2023.
In 2022, Fox Sports hired Oatley as a main play-by-play commentator for United States broadcasts of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first woman to serve in that role for the tournament's U.S. broadcast.[20][8]
Oatley appears regularly on Sky Sports programming as a match reporter on Soccer Saturday and has stand-in presented Goals on Sunday[31] and Sunday Supplement, where she took over from Neil Ashton on 14 January 2020 until the show was cancelled following the COVID-19 lockdown.[32][33]
Oatley is married to Jamie.[36] They live in Surrey, in southwest Greater London. She gave birth to daughter Phoebe in 2011 and son Max in 2014.[7] Her cousin in South Africa was a Springbokscricket selector, while his brother was a rally driver who twice won the Roof of Africa.[37]